A century ago, the tiny vessel Brunswick sailed from the French port of
Le Havre for New Orleans with a mixed human cargo. Of its 180
passengers, 60 were ordinary German immigrants, 80 were pre-Marxist
communists who called themselves Icarians, and the other 40 were
communists who called themselves Trappist monks. The Icarians were
coming to the U.S. to build a materialist Utopia, the Trappists to
build a monastery where they could contemplate God. The last Icarian
Utopia, at Cloverdale, Calif., fizzled out...